Arts & Culture | Film

While davening in her parlor office one sunlit morning several years ago, Rabbi Felicia Sol had a revelation: If she were to pursue her dream of becoming a mother even though she was single, she would still have the possibility of finding a husband — she might just be shifting the order around. The notion that pursuing parenthood on her own wasn’t all about loss proved to be liberating. Soon after, she went to see a doctor to explore possibilities. Rabbi Sol, one of the spiritual leaders of B’nai Jeshurun and one of the most prominent women rabbis in New York City, is now the single mother of a son and daughter.

There is a new generation of Israeli filmmakers out there, and its practitioners are taking the Israeli cinema in some fascinating new directions. Whether it’s the insider’s view of the haredi world given by Rama Burshtein in “Fill the Void,” the deeply disturbed teens in Jonathon Gurfinkel’s “S#x Acts” or the calculated ultra-violence of Aharon Keshales and Navot Pupashado in “Rabies” and “Big Bad Wolves,” these filmmakers are taking a subversive look at elements of Israeli society through the lens of the genre film. You can add another name to that list: Tom Shoval, whose first feature film, “Youth,” is on display in this year’s edition of New Directors/New Films, which runs from March 19-30.

At the feminist seders led by novelist E.M. Broner, the women would go around and introduce themselves matrilineally, naming as many ancestors as they knew. Broner wanted to be sure that they remembered the generations of women who spent the seder in the kitchen, preparing and serving, leaving the telling of the Passover story to the men.

At this stage of Jewish history, one might think that the last thing needed is a documentary that traces the ideological roots of ant-Semitism. We should know all this stuff by now, right? But “The Stigma?,” the new Catalan film that has its U.S. premiere as part of the 17th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, which begins this week, puts that history in a subtly different context that makes all the difference.